eli5: What does a “preponderance of evidence” entail for civil suits?
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It means that the jury must decide it’s more likely than not that you are guilty. It’s far from the “beyond reasonable doubt” standard for criminal cases.
It generally means that the evidence makes the particular argument more likely to be true than false.
Preponderance of evidence means you have to convince them you are at least 50.1% correct to win. There can be many doubts, but as long as you are more likely correct than not you win.
That’s different from Beyond a Reasonable doubt which should mean something like 99% sure they got it right.
Most easily said, any evidence that proves a point BEYOND 50% is a preponderance of the evidence
What makes me chuckle is we can all define preponderance of evidence pretty easily (just need a feather to tip the scale)… but struggle with “beyond a reasonable doubt” as I’ve seen some comments suggest 99% or 95%… which is a nominally small, but to me stark difference in the criminal world. Maybe it’s 90%, but I suppose it’s the best we got
51% likely that the thing happened is a preponderance of evidence.
This is mostly in comparison to “beyond a reasonable doubt” – which should be 95%+
1) A man walks into a store.
2) The same man walks out of the store carrying one of the store’s bags in one hand.
Did he buy something? Who’s to say “for sure”?
But the preponderance of evidence would lead you to believe that he did.
There’s a whole scale of [“standards of proof”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(law)#Standard_of_proof_in_the_United_States) ranging from “some evidence” to “beyond a reasonable doubt.” “A preponderance of evidence” is right at the halfway mark: the burden is met if the evidence is 51% likely.
Fwiw this is also the lay meaning of the phrase, as well. “Preponderance” is just “the quality or fact of being greater in number.”
The “beyond a reasonable doubt” means that the jury is convinced, without doubt, that they are guilty. Basically, there’s no other logical explanation for what happened.
Preponderance of evidence is “If you had to choose one or the other, which would you pick?”
Two sides present evidence concerning some yes-or-no issue; you have to pick which – yes or no. The one that wins is the one that is more likely to be true. That decision is made based on the preponderance of the evidence, generally the standard in civil disputes.
In criminal matters, in deciding whether someone is guilty or not, it is different. There is no equality of sides: the accused person doesn’t have to present any evidence that they are innocent.
Rather, the prosecution must demonstrate that the accused person is guilty. If the prosecution cannot do so, the accused must be found not guilty, even if it is more likely than not that they are guilty. The prosecution only proves its case if the only conclusion a reasonable person could come to, viewing the evidence presented, is that the accused is guilty. That is “beyond reasonable doubt”.
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